@NEStalgia You might wanna consider spacing your text out a little more, my friend. I already saw @rjejr kinda being quite daunted by the previous text wall, and it certainly does weird things with the eyes...
P.S.
Came across this video, and I immediately had to think of you:
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@ThanosReXXX Thanks for the informative video. My guess would have been that Trump doesn't himself, nor know any guys who build railroads, otherwise he'd be pouring money into their pockets, b/c that's what he does. I'm only 5 minutes in - gotta go cook dinner - but I was close.
video > wall of text
Someday we'll find it
The rainbow connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me
@ThanosReXXX fun video. Though endemic of our news here, and especially nbc (which is Comcast..............) It acts like an infomercial promoting one argument as truth.
I'm a huge railfan and history buff, so it's kind of glaring it's a propaganda piece. If course i fully endorse any rail project... But some of the argument in there makes me think I'm on the wrong side.
Though our biggest problem For now with rail is they put the cart before the horse. High speed rail is irrelevant if it takes you from a parking lot to a desert. Where do you go when you get off your bullet train if there's no transit at your destination? You have 800 people standing next to a track. They need local transit BEFORE the 900 trillion dollar tech demo maglev.
@rjejr Haha, we aim to please, regardless of the rather ominous avatar...
@NEStalgia So, you're trying to fool me into believing that there are no passenger railroads over there?
Over here, the TGV, the French high speed train, that travels from Amsterdam to Paris, makes use of the regular track, so no adaptations needed, for the most part. If people think it takes a HUGE infrastructure change, then they'd be wrong...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
Rail won’t work in the US on a nationwide scale anymore as a form of alternative transport to vehicles, because things are so spread out. The automaker industry took care of that when they began. Just like “jaywalking” was made a crime by auto lobbyists because early cars kept killing people since folks were used to walking in the roads.
#MudStrongs
Switch Friend Code: SW-7842-2075-5515 | My Nintendo: HobbitGamr
@ThanosReXXX passenger rail here exists at the specific urban level and not beyond it, and not in all urban areas. The coverage is thin. And most of it is what was left over from the really 20th century so it's only in the old (decayed) cities. There's amtrak between cities... It loses money except the electric NEC. The rest is diesel and mostly runs on freight track owned by freight companies that have right of way.... And is low speed. Even in the NEC where Acela runs, the amount of winding turns around old industrial ghetto zones has 35mph speed limits or less... That's brand new track but no train can take unbanked turns at any speed at that radius on limestone bedding no less. This stuff was built in the 19th century for steam motive power. The city was built around it. You can't move it. But high speed is still jumping to the last chapter. Low speed local transit needs to exist before high speed even needs to matter. Politicians ignore that
@NEStalgia Heck, that mall I mentioned doesn't even have much in the clothing department anymore except for a factory outlet type store and a Glik's. The rest of the clothing stores either closed entirely like the J.C. Penney or else moved across town to more accessible strip mall pastures. There was a decent shoe store, but they went so far as to relocate out of state to somewhere in Indiana after some of their stock was ruined; the roof, as in some other parts of the mall at the time, started leaking horribly after a torrential rainstorm. Some of the leaks to my knowledge have been repaired, but the place is still on life support.
The few times I'm there, I imagine what it was like in my youth. Even that was before its heyday. I've imagined what every unit would be like filled, and what kind of stores it would house....Wishful thinking coupled with an overactive imagination.
...I mean, a few pages back, I did mention a dream involving a fire-breathing Linoone fighting a friggin' dragon....
@ThanosReXXX To be fair, I'm much better than I used to be in the social department, but I do still struggle in some settings. I'm extremely cautious when strangers are about; I'm courteous to people, sure, but I usually keep my head down and stay pretty quiet. I'm aware that most people don't mean any harm and intend to continue with their own business, but I'm also not gonna throw caution to the wind.
By the way, I should clarify: I don't abhor all public transportation. Just the settings where you're crammed into something like a sardine. As long as there's some slight degree of separation between me and other people (like a personal seat), I'm generally fine.
I've even traveled by rail to a city a few hours away to attend Symphony of the Goddesses in late 2016. As mentioned above though, freight companies unfortunately have the right of way in most cases since they own the rail lines. The initial journey to the city was done in the normal, scheduled time. Heading home however, we added an hour and a half. We had to sit in sidings twice, plus we were stuck following a slow freight train for a good while.
Currently playing: Pokemon Scarlet DLC, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (Switch)
Uh so I guess I won't need to find a replacement hard drive for my laptop now, my family just surprised me with a 3-day early birthday gift. A new laptop!
A gaming one at that. Can't wait to test it with some of my steam games....
@NEStalgia Ah, yes. Amtrak. Those are the kinds of luxury trains I had in mind. More or less like the railroad equivalent of the Greyhound bus lines. But all of them probably look far nicer on TV than in real life.
All in all, my outlook on things over there is getting worse and worse. Try harder.
NEStalgia, the ultimate "don't come back to America" solution...
@Tyranexx Ah, that journey home doesn't sound too entertaining. We've got stuff like this happening over here also. For such a small country, the Netherlands has an extremely busy (some would even say overcrowded) railway network. You can get from anywhere to anywhere, but sometimes, the smaller stations and trajectories have their issues, and in places where they cross the main arteries of the railroads, traffic jams and considerable delays can happen. Oh, and come Tuesday, there's going to be a nation-wide strike, because they want to have better wages than they have now...
The result of that will be that the bus lines will get a surplus of about 5 to 6 times their capacity, seeing as trains can obviously hold far more passengers, so people will be stranded on stations for hours on end.
And somehow, these strikers always say they don't do this to hurt the general public, but strangely enough, that's exactly what they always end up doing...
@Morpheel Now where can I find a family like that?
@Knuckles-Fajita Oh, well. Can't exactly say that I've been all that sensible with my money, these last couple of days, so I can't really start pointing fingers at others...
If you meant to indicate railroads being built on limestone bedding as not exactly being sturdy enough to support any kind of high speed track, then you might wanna consider what all the Dutch railways are built on:
clay, mud, peat, sand and dirt (and in some places in the southern part of the country on marl). Everything over here needs to have fortifications underneath its fortifications if they don't want it to sink back into the sea...
@ThanosReXXX Did you know what NEC meant? @NEStalgia used it twice and you didn't mention it. Unless it came up earlier and he explained it. There' really no reason for you to know what it is, I live in the "northeast corridor" and nobody here ever says that. Well maybe when the tides start rising for real they'll talk about it more.
Acela - which I don't think stands for anything, just the name of the "high-speed" train line - was used for a year by my sister after she got married. She lived in Manhattan, worked in DC. She took it almost every weekend, her company picked up the tab. I think the NY - DC section of track is better than the NY - Boston section.
About 300,000 NYer's daily ride the LIRR "train" - not to be confused w/ the 6 million on the "subway" - to work. My wife among them them. There's also "Metro North" upstate and Connecticut and "Jersey Transit". So a lot of people do ride "trains" within cities. Though not nearly as many as subways. But for anything long distance it's on a plane. And I don't envision the country taking "a step backwards" to promote trains over airplanes anytime soon. Heck, I live on a 50 mile long island that only has bridges and tunnels on one end, we can't even get a new bridge or tunnel built, we have to rely on ferries. If all the suburban NY money can't get a bridge to the northeast I don't see high speed rail becoming a big deal. Maybe someday between a few major cities. NY - Chicago, Chicago to St Louis, San Fran to LA should have had one by now. Dallas to Houston would seem like a logical spot but most of those folk would probably rather just drive. But why drive when you can fly.
And somebody needs to say NIMBY. That's a big deal over here too, and those tracks and stations have to go somewhere.
OK my new yardwork tools arrived today, need to go try them out.
Thanos - I finished the season of The Passage. Thanks for the recommendation. I won't say more in case you haven't finished all 10 episodes yourself.
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